House Republicans blasted President Joe Biden for omitting any explicit mention of the Chinese spy balloon that floated over the United States last week in his State of the Union address.
Lawmakers called Biden’s approach to China in the speech “weak,” “embarrassing,” and “ridiculous” following the annual remarks to a joint session of Congress. Biden said, “If China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country, and we did.” However, he didn’t talk explicitly about the balloon that gripped the nation in the days leading up to the State of the Union.
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“I think it’s embarrassing, and quite frankly, I think he is embarrassed. It was a total national security failure on the part of the Biden administration,” Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) told the Washington Examiner after the speech. “They tried to redirect by blaming Trump saying, ‘Oh, Trump knew about it.’ I spoke to Cabinet members from the Trump administration. They said they were never briefed. And so I think the reason he didn’t mention it is because he’s embarrassed, and he knows that Americans feel less safe.”
Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) said a national security threat that occurred days before the State of the Union warranted a mention, telling the Washington Examiner: “I mean, yeah, it was ridiculous, right? I mean, when you think of the fact that an invasion just happened in our airspace and a spy balloon went over 21 military installations? I’m sorry, I think we should have talked about that.”
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) said that although Biden claimed he would take a strong stance on China, the incident revealed weakness.
“He mentioned in passing how he had been really tough, and he pushed back. But just the opposite. It was a complete show of weakness in my mind,” Jackson told the Washington Examiner.
Rep. Mark Alford (R-MO) added that the administration let the balloon traverse the nation “with impunity,” and something has to be done to prevent it from ever happening again.
“We’ve got to wake up in America that China is the most critical national threat to our security, economically in the way they’re stealing our intellectual property, and the military threat that they pose to our nation each and every day,” Alford said.
Several fiery GOP members even made their displeasure with Biden’s handling of the incident known during the speech by heckling him, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) shouting, “China is spying on us!”
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The balloon was first discovered by the public last week above Montana, and it drifted southeasterly before crossing over the Atlantic Ocean where it was shot down. Many GOP lawmakers called on the Biden administration to “shoot it down” shortly after it was discovered and were frustrated by the delayed response. Defense agencies maintained that the risk of debris causing harm to people or structures on the ground was too great to justify shooting it down over land.
China claimed the balloon was merely a meteorological instrument that drifted off course and rebuked the U.S. for shooting it down.
